Peggy Hoyt was born Mary Alice Stephens in Saginaw, Michigan in 1893. As a little girl, she liked to draw and paint and she had a keen interest in clothes; often designing and making clothes for her large family of paper dolls. Following the death of her father Charles J. Stephens, a wealthy lumber manufacturer, she moved to New York as a child with her mother, Caroline Stephens. According to Hoyt:
“As a small child, I had all the pretty frocks that any little girl could wish. Then, when I was five, we lost everything we had, and for a long time before his death, which came a few years later, Father was ill and unable to resume his business. Mother made up her mind to get a job at once. She decided to leave Saginaw, Michigan, which had been her home for years, and come to New York. Here, she believed, she would have a better chance to get work which would eventually lead to more than a bare living. Also, she foresaw the educational advantages I would have in a great city.” (Harrington, Pg. 18)
Unfortunately, Hoyt’s mother found it much harder than she had anticipated finding work in New York. She worked hard to send her daughter to a good school, and as a result couldn’t afford to spend time making her clothes, or spend the money on buying them. As a child when getting ready for church while at boarding school, Hoyt would find herself miserable in the somber dresses she had to wear, and would often wait until the other girls had gone to creep out and follow them to church. Finally, after a close call with their landlady, Caroline Stephens found a job as a comparison shopper for a large department store, eventually working her way up to one of the highest salaried European buyers for the store. In a 1927 interview in American Magazine Hoyt recalls:
“It may seem a bit far fetched, but I honestly believe that these early experiences of mine marked the beginning of my present passion for making people look their best. I began to study the appearance of the folks I met…. I was forever picking out women, and saying to myself, ‘Mrs. Brown’s hat is pretty, but it isn’t becoming on her,’ or ‘Miss Jones ought to give that dress to the tall Smith girl.’ And immediately I would start planning a dress that would belong to Mrs. Brown, or a frock that would make plump little Miss Jones look taller and thinner.” (Harrington, Pg. 18)
At age 17, after graduating from a girls' school, Hoyt preferred to become an apprentice in a Fifth Avenue millinery shop instead of making her debut. By 1915 she established her own shop under the name Peggy Hoyt, Inc. She started the shop, which was located on upper Fifth Avenue, with $300 she had borrowed from her mother, 3 years later moving the business to 16 East Fifty Fifth Street.
In 1917 Hoyt married Aubrey Eads, an officer in the American Naval Aviation Detachment. Eads had spent 14 months in France in 1917, and upon his return he became his wife’s business partner.
Just after World War I, Hoyt decided to broaden her field by designing women’s clothing. Soon becoming one of the foremost American designers of gowns and millinery, she offered the Parisian ateliers their first serious competition. In 1920 Hoyt’s costume designs for Colonel Henry Savage’s revival of “The Merry Widow,” were a huge sensation. In 1926 Peggy Hoyt, Inc. did over $1 million in business. At one point Hoyt was offered $1 million for the wholesale rights for her designs, which she turned down opting instead to keep her artistic freedom, creating only unique designs for American aristocrats.
Shortly before venturing into theatrical costume design, Hoyt courageously took over the Phillip Rhinelander mansion on East 55th Street. The house, located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side retail shopping area, provided over 27,000 square feet of space with a stately white marble hall and a carved stairway. Hoyt, who at the height of her career had hundreds of employees, transformed the mansion into not only her place of business, but one of the most exquisite fashion centers in America- with one floor devoted to clothes and another devoted entirely to hats.
In 1924 Hoyt created her own line of perfumes called Camellia, Mimosa and Yellow Orchid. She introduced two additional perfumes in 1925 called Flowers and Christmas.
Priding herself on not being a copyist, Hoyt took design away from the somber black clothes that French dressmakers had made all the fashion, preferring instead to use pastel colors and handkerchief hems. A pioneer of design, she was the first to trim hats with embroidery, the first to imitate the ancient turban of the Rajahs with the modern draped crown, and the first to use rhinestone ornaments- which became all the rage in 1925. Every one of the hundreds of hats and gowns displayed in Hoyt’s shop was designed by her alone, and she took great pride in each garment with her label sewn in it.
Peggy Hoyt, who for nearly twenty years dressed a small but exclusive clientele in every large city, died from pneumonia on October 26, 1937. However, there was no publicity of the death of the once miserable young girl in somber frocks who later became one of the best dressed women in New York City. Hoyt, who had a horror of personal publicity, had asked her mother and husband to honor her wishes for privacy upon her death, which they did. Although her husband, Eads, upon the request of Hoyt’s 500 employees, consented to a small service at the Little Church Around the Corner before her body was brought to Detroit and interred in Elmwood Cemetery.
Hoyt’s work continued after her passing with her mother and husband maintaining the establishment. Eads guarded his wife’s sketchbooks, which after his death were to become the property of the New York Public Library.
Bibliography
"Chapter in Fashion History Lies Behind Secret Burial: Peggy Hoyt, Pioneer U.S. Clothes Designer, Interred in Detroit Cemetery.” Detroit Free Press 05 Nov. 1937.
Dayton, Dorothy. ”Peggy Hoyt Led In Dress Design.” 1937/38?.
Ferris, Helen and Virginia Moore. Girls Who Did: Stories of Real Girls and Their Careers. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1927.
Harrington, Mildred. “Clothes Don’t Make The Woman But They Help A Lot.” American Magazine May 1927: 18-19.
Hoyt, Peggy and Kathreen Carroll Meehan. “New York: 1935 Fashion Appeal.” Commercial Art and Industry July 1935: 13-16.
Milbank, Caroline Rennolds. New York Fashion The Evolution of American Style. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1996.
”Noted Daughter of Saginaw Dies: Peggy Hoyt, Who Gained Front Rank as Clothing Designer, Buried in Detroit.” Saginaw News 05 Nov. 1937.